Stealing electricity and running scared

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Ghaith Abdul-Ahad tracks a "typical" day in the life of Iraqi man
Manhal Fadhel.

Manhal Fadhel is a 35-year-old engineer. He has dark eyes, black
hair and sometimes can be funny. He is always wearing a pair of
sandals with some cheap blue jeans.

He lives in al-Mashtal, a mixed Sunni, Shiite and Christian
neighbourhood, and he shares a small brick house with his father,
mother, wife and his three children.

In other words he is a normal, boring Iraqi. He will never make
the news headlines, unless he is dead, and then he will become a
number, to be added to the daily toll of violence in the
country.

This is an account of a "normal" day in his life.

6.30am. He wakes in his dark bedroom. His wife
cooks breakfast while he wakes and dresses the children. By this
time they will have been without electricity for more than eight
hours.

7.30am. He walks the children to their school.
Usually they would walk to school by themselves, but because of the
kidnapping spree they are not allowed anywhere alone. He has three
children, aged 10, eight and four.

8am. He watches his daughter's class to make
sure the teacher arrives before he goes to work. Sometimes the
teachers can't make it to the school because of the fuel crisis and
he will have to walk the children home again.

8.30am. He arrives at work 30 minutes late, to
be met by a big crowd of angry Iraqis who have spent a long time
without electricity. Manhal works as deputy head of the department
of maintenance for electricity in his area.

9.10am. He starts his work after finishing his
breakfast with his friends, the workers. His job list includes
replacing transformers that were burned because of overload,
largely caused by people whose power has been cut off stealing
electricity from the next street. He will fix cables damaged by car
bombs and American shootings.

10.30am. He starts receiving his first
customers, most of whom have been without electricity for a week
and have been queueing for days. "They are usually the same people:
we fix the transformer in their street one day, they overload the
system the next day, and then we have to fix it again. Sometimes it
gets really boring in here."

Noon. He leaves his job from a back door to
walk the children home. His wife can't do it because she might get
kidnapped.

1pm. His workers return and submit their
reports.

2pm. The day is over. This is when the workers
make the most of their money. The frustrated citizens who have been
waiting to get connected for their two-hour daily ration of
electricity realise that the best way to get it is to go to the
workers directly and pass them their address, along with a couple
of 5000 dinar notes. "Most of my workers make five times more than
what I make," he says. "The electricity grid in this country is
like a man dying with cancer and all you can do is give him some
tranquillisers."

2.30pm. Lunch at his house.

3pm. He is at the petrol station, taking his
father's place in the queue. His father has been there since
dawn.

7pm. If he is lucky he will get petrol, if not
he will sell his queue position and drive home.

8pm. He goes to a friend's house where they
play a game by candlelight.

9pm. He returns home to have dinner, play video
games with the boys and watch television, if they are lucky and
have electricity.

10.30pm. He is in bed with his wife watching a
DVD. If the electricity has gone by then, they will start the small
generator.

10.35pm. He is fast asleep.

Once a month he takes his family to his mother's house, five
kilometres away, where they spend the weekend. "We don't ever drive
outside our neighbourhood. The situation is very dangerous in
Baghdad with these car bombs. Every time I pass a checkpoint I am
scared like hell that someone might just decide to blow himself up
while we are there."

He is happy in his work. He makes more than $US220 a month now
compared with his $10 before the war. He feels miserable because of
the security situation. Being Shiite, he feels obliged to go out
and vote in today's elections. He thinks the insurgents are
terrorists and the Americans are more stupid than Saddam, who drove
his two brothers out of the country. "Allah is merciful," he
shrugs.